Moggi's win-at-all-costs method is the essence of a very Italian scandal

A lot of people would say Pierluigi Pairetto ought not even to have rung Juventus's general manager Luciano Moggi, let alone told him what he did. Two years ago, when their conversation was secretly recorded by the police, the portly silver-haired vet was a member of the Uefa referees' committee and one of the two "designators" who allocate referees to Serie A matches. Moggi was a man with a vast stake in who officiated where.

"I know you've been forgetting about me, but I've been remembering you," Pairetto began. "I've put in a great referee for the Amsterdam game [against Ajax]."

"Who?"

"[Urs] Meier."

"Terrific," Moggi said.

Reading that and other extracts from bugged telephone calls that were splashed across the newspapers at the beginning of May convinced many Italian fans that what they had long suspected was true. For years - decades, indeed - they had debated why, at critical moments, Juventus always seemed to get the benefit of the doubt on the field.

In one of the most famous incidents, which came in 1981 but is still talked about bitterly by Roma fans, their side lost the scudetto to the Turin club because of a hugely controversial offside decision.

For lack of proof a bizarre theory evolved, according to which the referees, even if they were not being paid or pressured, were somehow psychologically conditioned to favour the Bianconeri - the team of Fiat and the Agnellis, the nearest thing Italy has to a royal family. The transcripts, leaked from a separate investigation by prosecutors in Naples of a management agency owned by Moggi's son, indicated it was a lot simpler than that, at least in the 2004-5 season.

They suggested that, in league with other Juventus executives and key members of the Italian federation, Moggi senior was in effect remotely controlling Serie A, using a vast network of influence based on reciprocal favours.

Crucially, he is credited with being able to control the naming of referees and linesmen through his influence over the "designators". But that is not all. The transcripts suggest he could even influence the fans' subsequent perceptions of what had happened.

One quoted him urging a TV journalist to tamper with a slow-motion replay to hide a wrong decision in Juventus's favour.

It seems that, as other sides became aware of what the Italian media call the "Moggi method", some decided it would be impossible to beat it and so joined it instead in the hope of doing better than they would otherwise.

The Juventus influence began to feed off itself and spread way down the league table. In one conversation Moggi was called by Italy's former interior minister seeking favourable treatment for his local side, slogging away on the bare-earth pitches of Serie C1. A few weeks later the minister rang Moggi again with effusive thanks.

But when the Naples prosecutors sent the transcripts to the federation, nothing was done. Hence the accusation levelled against its former president Franco Carraro and other federation officials - that they knew about but did nothing to end the "Moggi method".

John Foot, author of Calcio: A History of Italian Football, thinks the scandal is in some respects quintessentially Italian: "Sucking up to the powerful is something that happens naturally in Italian society". But he also believes it is about the vast quantities of money now at stake in the Italian game. "The big clubs can't leave anything to chance now. They just have to win every year."

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